A 6'0", 235 lbs left-fielder, Ty was the Georgia Junior College player of the year in 2007 and a Second Team All-American in 2008. He combined to hit .365/.457/.658 over his past two seasons at Georgia Southern. Ty plays hard and has some serious strength.

Kevin had a big senior season at La Tech hitting .380/.440/.606 while striking out just 11 times. His father is Earl Winn, a scout for the Twins, and his brother plays in the Phillies organization.27th Round - Cameron Monger, OF from University of New Mexico

Despite being a solid 6'2", 205 lbs, Cameron runs the 60 in about 6.3 seconds. He didn't get to play all that much this season at New Mexico, but he can impact a game with his speed.

A terrific athlete, Wande hasn't had much of a chance to play at Stanford, amassing just 23 ab's over the past three seasons. Nevertheless, he can really run and has plenty of strength. Wande was born in Lagos, Nigeria before moving to Saudi Arabia where he played for the 2000 Little League World Series team. He is a member of the royal family of the Urhobo tribe in Nigeria. Here's a good article.

That's it for today. We still have some work to do tomorrow, but we're pumped how everything has fallen so far. We feel we have a lot of upside in this draft, and we're happy to add so much size and power. If a basketball or football game breaks out in Peoria, AZ, we'll be ready.

10 comments:

we are so lucky you post Paul. Like power arms, exciting - like ocela pitcher. can we get some call ups to elsinore. theres nobody w potential outside of pelzer & forsythe. how about decker & darnell playing 2nd?

WebSoulSurfer: According to Baseball-Reference.com, the Padres have drafted five (now six) players from U. New Mexico. None reached the big leagues; the most recent was OF Mark Wulfert, 1995 (11th round).

Paul: just want to say "nice draft", appreciate the effort of the management team, and particularly, your blog.

The front office can't promise wins or pennants, but just give us exciting baseball - give the team a chance - and the fans will be there to watch. The problem with trading Peavy, Gonzo, or other key building blocks (as rumors have had it) is that it puts the chance of a pennant at 3 to 5 years - again. A 10 or 15 game losing streak or even indifferent field play doesn't deflate fan interest as much as FO moves that push out pennant hopes for years.

It looks like the Padres are drafting to put exciting players in the field for years to come. It's promising, very promising, and we'll all be watching. - Scott

Though a lot of amateur players play both ways, they are usually drafted as one or the other. That doesn't mean that they can't or won't switch at some point during their careers but that doesn't happen too often.

It's all the same people here in the draft room, so there hasn't been any change in philosophy. I think it's really two things:

1) What happens to be available to us in the draft in any particular round

2) Player profiling

By "profiling" I just mean that people normally associate high school picks with athleticism and upside and college picks with polish and low ceiling. That isn't always the case. We've taken high schoolers at times that we thought had some polish and we've taken some college players we thought were raw and athletic.

Nevertheless, this draft class definitely has a lot of size, power, and athleticism.